It’s your duty to offer jobs to Britons, firms are told by minister

Employers were today told by business minister Matthew Hancock that they have a “social duty” to hire jobless British workers rather than immigrants.

Mr Hancock said they should stop putting “pure profit” first, even if it meant rejecting better-qualified people from overseas.

He was backed by Liberal Democrats, despite a row over an ad campaign in six London boroughs warning illegal immigrants to “Go home or face arrest”.

Mr Hancock said: “This is about a change of culture. It is companies’ social responsibility, it is their social duty, to look at employing locally first.”

If Britons needed more training than migrants, then firms should be prepared to dig into their profits, he added. “That may mean that they have to do more training. It may mean more training in hard skills, in specific skills. Or it may mean training in the wherewithal, the character you need in order to hold down a job.

“The responsibility of employers is to the community that they live in as well as to pure profit.”

Sarah Teather, Lib-Dem MP for Brent Central and one of the fiercest critics of the “Go home” ad campaign, agreed with Mr Hancock. “If you are saying to firms that you should invest in the people in your community, then that is a good thing,” she said.

Immigration has been made a central plank of the Tory election strategy. Many MPs fear a new influx of immigrant workers from Romania and Bulgaria when restrictions are lifted next year.

Labour MP Chris Bryant, the Shadow minister for immigration, said he had been “called xenophobic by the Tory Party” over a similar call upon firms.